


That Made Him Human

by SuchaPrettyPoison



Series: Swooner [8]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: A tad bit darker than anything else in the Swoonerverse, AU, Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Swoonerverse, mentions of killing, swooner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 16:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10666365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuchaPrettyPoison/pseuds/SuchaPrettyPoison
Summary: Everything about Oliver was solid and stead-fast, it was sometimes easy to forget that he had his own demons that he fought on a daily basis.--Some times the world just sucks.





	That Made Him Human

**Author's Note:**

> Alert - I tried to write a thing.
> 
> ** If you are new, I recommend starting at the beginning of the Swooner series. If you are a fan of being reckless and jumping into things feet first, welcome!  
> Things to know for this AU:  
> Felicity was raised by her father, who is wanted by authorities, made for an interesting childhood. She now works for the Star City P.D.  
> Oliver is a detective.

This world was utter shit sometimes. And that was coming from someone who knew how shitty the world could be and yet she was still surprised at times at the ability for true evil that people possessed. 

This wasn’t how this case was supposed to go. They were supposed to be the superheroes who saved the day and reunited a family, happy and alive. They weren’t supposed to be the people who had to tell parents that their daughter wasn’t coming home. And that responsibility didn’t even fall on Felicity’s shoulders, but it fell on Oliver’s. 

He was the one who had to face the grieving parents. He was the one who was on the scene when they found the body. He was the one who poured his all into finding this girl, to saving her, only for it not to be enough.  
Felicity knew he did everything he could. They had been going non-stop for the better part of the last three days; Oliver, John, and Felicity had lived and breathed only this case. This was part of the reality of the job, no matter how much they tried, no matter how good they were at their jobs, sometimes it wasn’t enough.  
She held back a sob.

Felicity couldn’t break down. Not yet. She could grieve later. Grieve for the young girl who would never have a future and for the parents who should have never experienced this kind of loss.  
Right now she needed to find Oliver.

She knew that he and John had arrived at the station about a half hour ago, John had come to see her, but she hadn’t heard from Oliver. Hadn’t seen him for that matter and that made her stomach churn in a way that was making her sick, because she knew Oliver Queen.  
She was there in bed when he’d woken up screaming in the middle of a storm, laying deadly still till he got his bearings. His breathing was ragged, face pale, and when she moved to touch him, he’d flinched at the action – that had torn at her heart. He ended up falling asleep that night, with his body wrapped around her. He gave off too much heat, and she wasn’t comfortable, but he clearly needed it so she didn’t protest or give any sort of remark. Everything about Oliver was solid and stead-fast, it was sometimes easy to forget that he had his own demons that he fought on a daily basis.

Felicity knew about his time with the military. She had (illegally) followed his missions and lent a helping hand any moment she could, but she didn’t know about the first hand horrors that he witnessed. They had talked about his time there. Which meant the Oliver would give little tidbits of information every now and then, but he never shared too much about that time in his life. And she got it. Everyone had parts of their past that they’d rather not think about, but she did worry about him from time to time when he got the distant look in his eyes or woke up in the middle of the night. It wasn’t often; and he had John, who had been in combat as well, but she still worried about him.

She also worried that she wasn’t doing the comforting thing right. She didn’t have the best role model growing up nor had she really ever had to comfort anyone, and sometimes she felt out of her depth with what she wanted to do. All Felicity wanted was for Oliver was for him to be happy, for him to smile and laugh, and forget about how shit the world could be.

Walking down the hallway which lead to the small gym, she realized that is was deserted, which was odd, and gave her her first clue that she was on the right path to finding Oliver. Honestly, this was really only the third place she’d thought to look. First had been his desk, which was a mess. Like, she wasn’t certain how he got anything done with what was going on with that whole deal. Then she’d popped into the unused holding rooms, but those came up empty. And so the only other place she could think was the gym.  
He wouldn’t have left. That much she was certain about.

Oliver didn’t run away. It wasn’t the way he was wired. He ran head first into danger. He wouldn’t have left without seeing her. Felicity on the other hand had spent her life running away, of just trying to survive, and now she was pretty much half running to find him.

Stopping at the door, she peered through the little glass window, to see him going to town on one of the punching thingies that he liked so much. His jacket was thrown on the floor, his tie was loosened, the top buttons of his shirt were undone, and he looked dangerous. Sweat was beading down his face, which was flushed and pulled into an expression that had Felicity throwing the door open to get to him.

He was too far away. He was hurting.  
She needed to do something to help ease his pain.

“No.” The growl that came from him caused her to falter. Oliver had never used that voice with her. Ever. He’d always wanted her close and had never done anything to try and keep her at arm’s length. Yes, she might have ran from him, tried to avoid him, but she had never fathomed him doing that to her.  
It was odd having the shoe on the other foot. 

“Oliver.”  
She fought to keep the crack of emotion out of her throat. It failed.  
Oliver’s shoulder’s sagged and he turned his face away from her, hiding it in the shadows.

“No, Felicity.”

Did he really expect her to just stand there, ten feet away and him suffer? Because that was so not happening.  
He needed her to be strong right now. She could do that, but she was going to do that within touching distance of him.

“John told me what happened.” She spoke in a soft tone, making small movements. Like she was approaching a wounded animal, or how Oliver would approach her when she would teeter on the edge of running. His hand was clenching and unclenching, the knuckles of his hand were red and raw. Everything was raw about him right now. 

“Figured he would.” 

The words were detached and almost cold. He was going to a dark place, or was already there it was hard to say, and it was completely understandable given the current circumstances.  
Felicity needed him to look at her.

“I am so sorry. I don’t know how to make this better. I don’t think anyone can make this better.” She was close to him now and could see the fatigue and exhaustion that had taken the place of the adrenalin. The florescent lights created shadows and valleys which aged his face. All she wanted to do was pull him in her arms and promise him that they would make this better somehow.

He gave a laugh that held anything but amusement and caused bile to rise in her throat. “You can’t. I wasn’t enough and now a sixteen year old girl is dead. That’s on me.”

This man would kill her talking like that. Everything about him in that moment felt dark and broken, he was taking this innocent girl’s death on himself. As though he had done the heinous deed instead of trying everything in his power to save her.  
No matter how many lives he saved, at this time, it didn’t matter.  
No matter how hard Oliver appeared, how aloof he could come across, the loss of life still hit him hard and that made him human. 

“That is not on you. That is on the sicko who kidnapped her. We did everything we could. You did everything you could. We will get that girl and her family justice, but right now, we need to get you home. You need a shower and you need to sleep.”

Just like that he snapped and she was staring at his icy gaze, his face was a mix of complete detachment and utter pain. It was a look that could bring a person to their knees, but he needed her. He might not realize it at the moment. But she wasn’t ever going to let him go through something that caused him so much pain on his own. 

“You expect me to just leave when that fucker is still out there?” He snarled. Actually snarled and it took all her strength not to flinch his ferocity. Oliver never cursed. Well, not around her; not really. There was something ugly in those words and she knew he was trying to push her away. 

Oliver was tall and muscular, he hadn’t bothered to shave since this case was handed to them, and there was bruising under his eyes from lack of sleep. The man looked feral and dangerous, any sane person would have run from him. Felicity never claimed to be fully sane.

She took the final step to him, placing her hands on his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breathes and making certain that she maintained his focus. He needed sleep, a decent meal, and he really needed a shower. But none of that mattered in that moment, because what he needed most of all was to come back to himself.

“Hey.” Soft tone and moving her right hand up to his neck she moved closer to him, “Hi. The fucker is going down. I have facial recognition running and I’ve hooked it up to my phone, so it’ll ping the moment that there’s a hit. But right now there is nothing we can do. It’s nearly eleven. We will get this guy.”

Felicity watched as the pain took over and his although he still looked like he was on the end of his tether, he took a long deep breath. None of what had happened on this case had been okay. All of it was a reminder that there was evil in the world, but they couldn’t let that consume them. She wouldn’t let it consume them.

“I keep thinking about when it happened to you. What could have happened to you. Of what could still happen to you because of who your father is -- or because of me. What if something I did blew back on you? I couldn’t live with myself. And that girl was just a few years younger than Thea.”

Oh.  
He was seeing them in this girl.  
It had been the first kidnapping he’d worked since it had happen to Felicity.  
This made sense. But Felicity wasn’t what most would consider normal and she was getting ready to teach Thea how to get out of a variety of restraints. She’d grown up being taught to expect the worst and be prepared for how to escape, she had come to the mindset that that was normal for her. The poor girl who had been abducted was not expecting it, her normal life hadn’t been filled with people teaching her how to pick locks or where to hit someone to maximize your chance of escape.  
Clare had been your average teenage girl. She maintained a ‘B’ average, was in the drama club at school and was her class’s historian. She had a large group of friends, but only a handful that she’d considered close. She was smart with what she posted online and by all accounts was a nice girl. Even as Felicity, dug deeper and deeper to try to find someone, anyone, who would do this to her, she found nothing. Clare was just your average sixteen year old girl and she deserved to live her life happy.

Not that Felicity didn’t deserve to be happy, but she had thought that way for a while.  
And Thea was a Queen, which meant that she came from the most powerful family in the city, Everyone wanted a part of Thea, if only to further their own self-interest; that made Thea one of the best people Felicity had ever seen at reading someone. The girl had it down to an art form. She could easily be a profiler for a law enforcement agency or work in politics, but she used her skill to run a successful night club.  
Thea had also been taught some self-defense by Oliver and recently Felicity had taken her under her wing to teach her the skills she’d been taught growing up.

She and Thea were not exactly what most would consider normal. They had both been brought up to look over your shoulder and expect the worst. At the same time, Oliver was protective, and would do what he felt he needed to do to keep both of them safe.

If he tried to breakup with her, she was just going to have to tell him no.  
There was no him keeping her at arm’s length to make sure she was safe. They were not going to be playing that game.

“I’m here. I’m safe.” She pressed herself up to place a light kiss on his lips; just in case he needed evidence. Also, he was on the gross, smelly, and sweaty side, but none of that mattered because he was here with her; coming back from the dark pit that he had begun to sink into. “Thea is safe. And we will get this guy. But Oliver, you can’t control everything. Just remember you have a team of people working with you, you’re not in this alone.” 

He gave a barely there nod of his head. 

“Good. Good. Now, let’s go home. I’ll drive. Then shower, food, and sleep for a bit. This psycho can’t hide forever. We’re going to find him and get justice.” She was giving the orders now.

Felicity’s hand found his as she bent down to pick up his jacket before pulling him out of the building, taking a way that would prevent them from running into anyone, she got them to her car and opened the door for him. This was done in a steady silence that would have made her anxious at one time, but she found the lack of talking was nice at times and focused on the way his hand felt under hers and the heat he gave off.

Opening his door, she gave him a small smile. “Your chariot.”

That earned her a barely there eye crinkle and he bent his head to give her a kiss, pressing her into the side of the small car’s door frame as he cupped the sides of her neck in both hands. It was a light kiss that held the weight of their entire relationship, his lips just settled on hers not asking for anything more than to just be there with her for a moment.

“I smell.” He muttered these loving words against her lips. But Felicity saw what this was, it was an attempt to come out of the dark, an opening for her to bring in some light, any light that she could. So she did.

“I wasn’t going to say anything. But yes, yes you do. Lucky for you, I am such an awesome girlfriend that I will shower with you to help scrub your back.” She spoke against his lips and relaxed slightly for the first time in several days.

Nothing about this case was okay.  
It was a reminder of how there were villains out in the world, in their city, but they would do everything in their power to see that the psycho was caught. 

Which they did.  
A week later, she got a ping on her computer and sent the coordinates over to John and Oliver. They stopped the guy from taking another girl and would get justice for Clare.  
That night, back home in the loft, curled up on the couch, wrapped in Oliver’s arms with his lips on the top of her head, Felicity allowed herself to finally grieve.

They may not be able to stop every bad thing that happened in the city, but they could try their best, and remember that they weren’t in the fight alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes the world is shit and all you can do is keep on going.
> 
> This is definitely a more seriously toned part of the Swoonerverse, but sometimes life gives you serious situations. Plus, Felicity is part of Oliver's support system and I wanted to show that as well as the fact that Oliver isn't perfect. We all know he isn't, but I think every now and then I forget how many demons he has. Not so much this season since its all about his past, but still.
> 
> Anywho, this was written while I was sick and came on the heels of me writing the fun bouncy one with Felicity getting her arm stuck in the vending machine. Its much darker than anything else in this verse, but I think it was a needed story.  
> And I hope you agree
> 
> As always. I hope I have not failed this story/verse!
> 
> tumblr: [SuchaPrettyPoison](http://www.suchaprettypoison.tumblr.com/)  
> twitter: [SamyRed_](https://twitter.com/SamyRed_)


End file.
